This invention relates to interactive television program guides, and more particularly, to television program guides in which users may create profiles of their programming preferences. Profiles contain information about the user""s interests (e.g., favored or disfavored programming genres, actors, channels, series, etc.) The profiles are used by the program guide in determining how programming information is presented to the user.
Cable, satellite, and broadcast television systems provide users with a large number of television channels. Users have traditionally consulted printed television program schedules to determine the programs being broadcast at a particular time. More recently, interactive electronic television program guides have been developed that allow television program information to be displayed on a user""s television.
Interactive program guides are typically implemented on set-top boxes. Such program guides allow users to view television program listings in different display formats. For example, a user may instruct the program guide to display a grid or table of program listings organized in a channel-ordered or a time-ordered list. Users may also search and sort program listings by genre (e.g., movies, sports, etc.) or by title (i.e., alphabetically). A user may obtain additional information for a program by placing a highlight region on a desired program listing and pressing an xe2x80x9cinfoxe2x80x9d button. The user may purchase a pay program from the program guide by placing the highlight region on a program listing and pressing an xe2x80x9cOKxe2x80x9d button. Some systems allow the user to select a program for recording by placing the highlight region on a program listing and pressing a xe2x80x9crecordxe2x80x9d button.
Because there are so many television channels available, particularly with cable and satellite television systems, television program guides have been developed that allow users to designate favorite channels or broad programming categories, or genres.
This approach is not very selective. Even though a user may have chosen a channel to be highlighted in color, some of the programming that appears on that channel may not be of interest to the user. The same would apply to program genres, wherein not all movies, nor all sports events, etc., would be of interest to the user. Moreover, programs that would be of interest to the user often appear on channels or in genres that the user has not chosen as favorites (e.g., because the user does not like most of the programming on that channel or in that genre).
What is needed is a more sophisticated way in which a user may inform a program guide of the user""s preferences, so that the program guide can more accurately highlight programming of the type the user likes.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a program guide system with which a user may set up a profile based on various preference attributes indicative of a user""s interests.
These and other objects of the invention are accomplished in accordance with the principles of the present invention by providing a interactive television program guide system in which a user may inform a program guide of the user""s television programming interests. The user may specify a number of program characteristics such as program title, genre or category, rating, actor, etc. as preferred attributes. For each preferred attribute, the user may select a particular color. A preference attribute and its respective color are associated as a display criterion. A plurality of display criteria may be set by the user. The programming list may be displayed based on the display criteria, i.e. the preference attributes and selected colors.
The program guide may be created or modified by selecting program characteristics as preferred attributes. Each preference attribute is assigned a color by the user. Alternatively, the program guide may be created or modified by highlighting a program listing or selecting a program to which to which the user has tuned. The program characteristics of the highlighted program listing or the selected program may be selected as preference attributes to which colors are assigned.
A user may define the display format of each program. For example, a user may define the maximum number of colors that may be displayed for a single program. A user may define a preferred sort order for display criteria and may display colors in the defined sort order.
The program guide may maintain the display criteria in a preference profile. Different preference profiles may be used by different users of the same program guide. If desired, more than one preference profile may be active at a given time. A master profile may be used that has settings that override the settings in other profiles.
Further features of the invention, its nature and various advantages will be more apparent from the accompanying drawings and the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments.